I have a question about "Author(s)" and "Author Sort" meta info in calibre.

I had assumed that I could put the authors name in the format "First Last", and then in "Author Sort", enter "Last, First". That way my authors list would display "First Last", while sorting by last name...

I think it works that way in calibre itself. The Sony uses the authors name in the LRF metadata to do its sort.

I think to change the author name in the LRF you would have to reconvert it from the source format. Not even sure this is possible. I assume it puts the author name into the metadata and not author sort name.

yeah the sony reader is rather finicky about where it gets metadata from. At some point I have to spend some time debugging this and figuring out exactly what the reader is getting its metadata from (the ebooks file itself or the media.xml database). Unfirtunately I have other priorities at the moment

At some point I have to spend some time debugging this and figuring out exactly what the reader is getting its metadata from (the ebooks file itself or the media.xml database).

I can save you some time with this.

As far as I can tell, the Reader reads metadata only from media.xml. Even if the data is clearly incorrect or even not present in media.xml (e.g. you manually remove it), the Reader will not reread the metadata from the book itself.

But (you knew there would be a but, right?) there is a catch: That is only true as far as the XML record for the book is valid - that is, at the very least file path, file date (either creation date or modification date, depending on whether you use internal memory or a memory card) and file size match in XML and in the filesystem (and it is possible, but not certain, that the ID in XML must be sequential). If any of these values does not match, the old XML record is deleted and new one is created; at this point, metadata is reread from the book for the purpose of XML generation. But the actual display of the metadata is, once again, done from the XML itself - if you were to modify the XML file now, the Reader would display the modified metadata.

Yeah makes sense, that's about what I though was happening (apart from the bit about creation and modification times which I hadn't realized).

Is it true that the new firmware doesn't use the reading attribute from LRF files any more? i.e. if I set --author-sort on a lrf file using lrf-meta and just copy it to the reader (without touching media.xml) it will use --author and not --author-sort from the LRF file?

Is it true that the new firmware doesn't use the reading attribute from LRF files any more? i.e. if I set --author-sort on a lrf file using lrf-meta and just copy it to the reader (without touching media.xml) it will use --author and not --author-sort from the LRF file?

It is true.

And there is more - even if you add authorSorter attribute to the XML manually, the Reader will ignore it. That is, with new firmware - it used to work with the old firmware.

And there is more - even if you add authorSorter attribute to the XML manually, the Reader will ignore it. That is, with new firmware - it used to work with the old firmware.

I just tried adding authorSorter to the xml file, and it didn't work for me either. It actually regenerated the meta info, because I lost my bookmarks for the book. So it must not even recognize authorSorter as a valid attribute.

I just tried adding authorSorter to the xml file, and it didn't work for me either. It actually regenerated the meta info, because I lost my bookmarks for the book. So it must not even recognize authorSorter as a valid attribute.

In that case you did something wrong, because I know for a fact that a record with authorSorter is considered valid by the reader, even with the new firmware.

So is changing the author's name to "Surname, First Name" the only way to get the 505 to sort by the author's last name?

I'd rather not have to, but it is very annoying to have the reader sorting by first name, I keep looking in the wrong place. If it makes any difference I'm using the UK current firmware --- 1.2.00.18050

Also---many thanks for the Calibre software, having software for the 505 that works on linux is fabulous!

I have a PRS-700 and was trying to edit the metadata to list author and book title. What I got when I transferred these books to the reader was booktitle, by author all on one line.
Example: Cross Country by James Patterson.pdf when I sort by author. All of the source files are .pdf. Is there a way to separate the info?